The present invention generally relates to an electrical connector with an add-on contact shielding module.
Electrical connectors are used today in a wide variety of applications, one area of which concerns connectors configured to interconnect coaxial cables with printed circuit boards. In some applications, right angle connectors are used to join the coaxial cables with the circuit board. The connector includes a cable mating face that can be configured to mate with either a connector plug or jack on the end of a coaxial cable. The cable mating face is formed at a right angle to the bottom of the connector, with the bottom being configured to be mounted to a circuit board. Contacts extend from the cable mating connector mating face through the housing of the connector and out a back side of the housing. The contacts are bent at a right angle to extend downward to engage contacts or vias on the circuit board.
However, conventional right angle coaxial connectors have met with certain disadvantages. In coaxial connectors, the signal contacts, that exit the connector housing before being joined to vias in the circuit board, expose a portion of the contact body to an open, ambient air environment. The portion of each contact that extends through air represents a non-shielded and non-impedance controlled area that may introduce signal transmission problems, such as cross talk, electromagnetic interference, impedance mismatch, digital bit errors and the like. Today, as data transmission rates increase, the need increases for fewer signal transmission errors. Many new high speed applications today require a very high level of shielding and impedance control. Yet, it is desirable to avoid the need to develop an entirely new connector configuration for such high speed applications.